When Gloria Arellanes is asked about her time with the Chicano Brown Berets in the late 1960s, the first thing she mentions is the community health clinic she helped start in East Los Angeles - the first of its kind in the area.

The El Monte resident recalls walking up and down East L.A. neighborhoods encouraging residents to visit the clinic, where their legal status didn't matter and neither did the contents of their wallets.

"In those days the poverty was so bad and there weren't many agencies to help. We worked in health, housing, education. We tried to work on all the social ills," Arellanes said.

But that is not the legacy many people recall when they think of the Brown Berets and the Chicano civil rights movement they helped mobilize here in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

"A lot of times people think of this as a militant movement filled with rhetoric and a certain idea of confrontational politics ... but the reality is that these were simply people who wanted to better their community," said Cal State Los Angeles Chicano studies professor Dionne Espinoza.

Espinoza and Arellanes have teamed up to start a new archival collection at Cal State L.A. to chronicle the Chicano civil rights movement in East L.A.

Arellanes, 64, has donated boxes full of documents, political fliers, newspaper articles, photos, posters and buttons documenting her time with the movement, from her post as minister of finance and correspondence for the Brown Berets to her participation in the Poor People's Campaign.

"When you go through these materials, you find the day to day work of social change," Espinoza said.

The archive, complete with an actual brown beret, helps bring to life the movement for students and scholars in a way stories alone cannot, Espinoza said.

"Maybe it's more spiritual - when you see a button someone wore in 1969, you have a different encounter with the past than you do when you just read a story about it," she said.

Beyond that connection, the archive has already helped scholars shed new light on the time period, Espinoza said.

For example, one document in Arellanes' collection is a flier inviting Chicanas in the movement who feel their ideas are being suppressed to join a new women's group: Las Adelitas de Aztlan.

The single sheet of paper speaks volumes about the participation of women in the movement, Espinoza said.

"In those days we said we were unified, but the truth was we were walking behind the men," Arellanes said.

Studying the flier has helped Arellanes come to terms with her own history.

Despite her leading the women's exodus from the Brown Berets, she never thought of herself as a feminist.

"To us, women's lib was all about anglo women burning bras. That didn't relate to us Chicanas struggling day to day," she said. "It took me 40 years to realize it was Chicana feminism."

Arellanes' participation in the movement culminated in the Chicano Moratorium, an anti-Vietnam war and civil rights protest that drew 30,000 people to East L.A. on Aug. 29, 1970. The protest ended violently with numerous people injured and three people killed. Arellanes, who was on the rally's stage when the violence erupted, was tear-gassed and eventually fled in a bus.

The days and years that followed are a bit fuzzy in Arellanes' mind. She suggests it could be a sort-of posttraumatic stress disorder. And for years she tried to put that past behind her, instead focusing on exploring her indigenous roots as a Tongva Gabrieleno.

But lately the archive project, as well as events commemorating the 40th anniversary of the moratorium, are helping Arellanes come to terms with her past.

"I finally owned it. This is my personal history. This collection reflects what I was living, what people were living 40 years ago," she said.

"Though the Chicano Moratorium ended tragically, it was a great event ... It brought thousands of people out whereas nothing else had before. It taught people to be proud of who they were culturally. It taught people that they can get results - for your hard work, a child will be able to go to school; for your hard work, a family will eat; for your hard work, someone will go to the doctor," she said.

Arellanes is hoping other participants in the movement will follow her lead in donating their personal collections to the archive.

To see the archive or contribute, call Cal State L.A.'s special collections department at 323-343-4435.